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April302012

As student journalists increasingly arm themselves with mobile phones for multimedia newsgathering in the field, more may find themselves on a collision course with local authorities unenthusiastic about having their actions captured in living color.

A reminder of that comes in the pending criminal trial of Pennsylvania photojournalism student Ian Van Kuyk, arrested earlier this spring while shooting a routine traffic stop. That case and others like it also spotlight how important is for journalism educators to make sure student journalists know their rights and how to stand up for them.

Van Kuyk, a Temple University film and media arts major fulfilling an assignment for his photojournalism course, was reportedly left bloody and bruised after being arrested mid-March while taking pictures of police at a routine traffic stop outside his home in Philadelphia. He was arraigned on criminal charges April 16 and faces trial June 13.

The case has drawn the attention of free speech advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), according to the Student Press Law Center, or SPLC. The general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association wrote in protest to the Philadelphia police commissioner: "There is no excuse for your officers to intentionally disregard a citizen's right to photograph an event occurring in a public place."

And in a piece in Philly.com, Larry Atkins, a lawyer, journalism professor at Temple, and member of the First Amendment Committee of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, wrote that "while the public should be respectful of police and refrain from interfering with their work, officers must not harass citizens engaging in First Amendment-protected activity. The public has a right to photograph police activities in public spaces, and police officers must respect that right."

But the Van Kuyk case is far from the only instance of arrest and alleged harassment of student photojournalists tracked by the SPLC, which says prosecutions of those who record law enforcement activity appear to be on the rise.

The right to record is clear, but not absolute

So what should journalism educators teach student photojournalists about shooting police activities? Bottom line: They have every right to do it -- with some exceptions.

"Here's what [students] (and even more, the police) need to know," wrote Curt Chandler, a senior multimedia lecturer at Penn State University, who has had two student photographers arrested in the last five years and cited this passage from an ACLU briefing on photographers' rights in a recent exchange on the Online News Association's Educators Facebook group: "Taking photographs of things that are plainly visible from public spaces is a constitutional right -- and that includes federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police and other government officials carrying out their duties."

But there are limits, advised the SPLC. Students, for instance, need to beware of what may be considered interference with police operations. "[E]ven if there is a First Amendment right to photograph and videotape law enforcement officers, this right is not absolute," warned SPLC. "Actions that constitute disorderly conduct, refusal to follow lawful police directives, harassment, stalking, trespassing, or other similar crimes may result in criminal prosecution."

But some educators believe it's not enough to know the law. Student journalists must also be willing to assert the rights they have.

Steve Fox, multimedia journalism coordinator at UMass-Amherst, wrote on the ONA Educators group: "I don't think that students don't know their rights. They do. It's more a state of mind that is lacking. Students seem unwilling to challenge authority, challenge the status quo, challenge the party line, afflict the comfortable."

Added Fox: "More times than not, students faced with confrontation from authority figures become compliant -- all while fully knowing what their journalistic rights are. It's frustrating and a fundamental disconnect that I see with many young journalists of this generation."

What's your experience as a journalism educator or student journalist? Are student journalists willing to confront authority figures to assert their free speech rights? And do students actually know the nuances of their rights in covering police action or not? Do you know of other student journalist arrests or cases of intimidation of student journalists by police or other authorities during news coverage? What approaches does your school use to teach about photojournalist rights?

April272012

Welcome to the 46th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the Rafat Ali as co-hosts. Rafat is celebrating his birthday, we're not sure how old he is, but we know that he loves photography. So this week we are celebrating his birthday by doing a special show focused on photography in the digital age. Our roundtable includes crack professional photographer Gregor Halenda, photo and multimedia guru Brian Storm and social photographer extraordinaire Thomas Hawk in a wide-ranging discussion.

First is the debate over rights: Is it a good idea to post your photos on social media under a Creative Commons license? Or should you be more restrictive of your photos online? We also talk about the state of stock photography and the democratization of photography now that the tools are more accessible -- and everyone has a potential global reach online. And what about the rise of amazing cameraphones, apps and filters? Now that Instagram has been bought by Facebook for $1 billion, what's the implication about the future of photo-sharing and filters? Thomas Hawk also cites Google+ as being a hotbed of photography. How did it surpass Facebook?

We looked at the impact of user-generated content and social media, CNN iReporters and of course our affiliate contributions in breaking news. Consumer and pro-sumer technologies are simpler and more accessible. Small cameras are now high broadcast quality. More of this technology is in the hands of more people. After completing this analysis, CNN determined that some photojournalists will be departing the company.

What exactly led up to this is point is hard to pinpoint; it's a chicken-or-egg situation. Some might say it began with the lowered cost of DSLR cameras or the fact that every cell phone began to come with a camera.

Another camp will point fingers at the steady decline of the newspaper industry and its inability to maintain exclusivity as the daily go-to for information, leading to a shift of quantity over quality.

Add to that the crash of world economies, and the result is that photojournalists have been losing their jobs to mass layoffs for the last few years.

But many are rallying and turning on the video function on their DSLR cameras and becoming video journalists.

Photographers learning video

One successful photojournalist who early on made the transition to video is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Vincent Laforet. He told me that when he was growing up, he wanted to study both journalism and film. "I picked journalism in the end and am happy I did so. When the Canon 5D MKII came out -- it seemed to be the perfect timing to make the transition for me," he said.

Laforet dove into video early on when the technology presented itself and has made a name in the video world. He is now a member of the Directors Guild of America.

I also spoke with two photojournalists currently incorporating video into their reporting, Ana Elisa Fuentes and Julie Dermansky.

Ana Elisa Fuentes' photography has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Life, Vanity Fair, People Magazines and the Los Angeles Times, and Julie Dermansky has been working with The Atlantic, US News, The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

I asked them why they first started shooting video, what difference they find between photojournalism and video, and what they think of the current market for photojournalists.

Ana Elisa Fuentes: Clearly the market for photojournalism, at least in the United States, is shrinking -- specifically, the day-in-and-day-out photojournalism as seen in daily newspapers and magazines. This is very sad, and I see this as perilous and injurious to democracy. Journalists are the fourth estate, part of the check and balance of our democratic process. Images are essential to an open society.

The most profound difference for me between video and photography is in "still" -- in photography, you can wait for hours for the right moment. The waiting requires patience, for what Henri Cartier Bresson coined as "the decisive moment." When you have captured this moment, everything comes together.

I believe having more tools available in the tool box is essential for photographers or anyone in visual media. I also believe photographers have to become more creative in how still images can be used or sold. I often recommend up-and-coming journalists to think "packaging." What languages do you speak? How many? Polish your writing skills. Acquire multimedia skills. Your office is your laptop -- update, update, update."

Julie Dermansky: I started out as an artist showing my work in galleries and selling it on the streets of NYC in 1988. In 2004, I switched my focus from painting and sculpture to photography. I branched out from my in-depth personal projects into the realm of photojournalism in 2008. Labeling myself an artist or a photojournalist is of no consequence to me. I leave that for others. I started to learn video when I went to Iraq in 2008 and started to make a habit of shooting video along with my stills using a Canon 5D MKII in 2010.

Technically, photography and video require some of the same skills. The hardest thing sometimes is to decide whether to shoot video or stills -- often by doing both you can end up with work that is not as good as it should be. It is very hard to go back and forth, and inevitably you will miss the still you wish you would have taken -- or missed the moment of action you wanted to film. So generally, I shoot stills first and video once I'm done, though I don't always stick with that standard. Emotionally, that has more to do with the situation than the media. Both are fantastic tools to work with.

I have worked with a cameraman and produced video news packages from Iraq, so I picked up tips from him. Working with a pro in the editing phase taught me a lot of what is needed to make a news package.

This is a terrible market for photojournalists since so many photographers are willing to give their work away for free. Media outlets have started to rely on the free stuff. There is a small number of photojournalists who are able to continue to make a living, but the whole marketplace seems to deliver lower and lower paychecks -- and there are fewer jobs. Crowdsourcing and free photos are lowering the bar of quality as well. Some talented members of the photography community have had to drop out to make a living in a different way.

Shooting video helps keep a photographer marketable as news media wants both stills and film these days, and they want it for one price. If you can't do it, they take someone who can. Also, in the commercial world, video commands higher fees than stills, so for practical purposes video shooting is a skill one needs to have to survive. Not to learn it is to limit yourself. You should take advantage of all available tools at your disposal. That is how I see it."

Julie Dermansky is interviewed by Fox News about her photojournalism work on the Occupy movement.

Do photojournalists make good video journalists?

Adam Westbrook, a multimedia producer who writes and lectures on the subject of video journalism, believes there are many pitfalls to be avoided when photographers move into video.

Some include: forgetting the importance of audio or not using a tripod when needed and, most importantly, understanding "show, don't tell" as a principle of visual storytelling. As he aptly says, "Five years after YouTube's birth there's probably not a newsroom in the land that isn't trying to do video journalism in some way or another."

Some of the mistakes Westbrook points out can be avoided with proper training, but that appears to be something many employers are not willing to pay for. As early as 2009, the question of whether or not newspapers would be willing to train their photographers to become video journalists was being investigated by Blake Kimzey for Black Star Rising: "Training for photojournalists in video varies from newspaper to newspaper -- but at many papers, it's been spotty at best. Most photographers say sufficient training and the time to learn are seldom provided. While some newspapers send their staffers to attend industry conferences, and others offer in-house courses, many staffers say they mostly learn through trial-and-error on the job."

This appears to still be a problem -- as Sean D. Elliot, president of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), recently told me: "Unfortunately for our members, the publications have been wanting the video, but they have not generally been willing to pay for the training. Many visual journalists have paid their own ticket to attend NPPA's many video and multimedia workshops."

Elliot said that the advent of web video and multimedia led the NPPA to reconfigure many of their educational programs some years back.

"This was in the era when newspapers everywhere were looking at web video as the salvation of their operations. Time has shown that nobody has been able to monetize web video well enough for it to be any sort of saving grace," he said. "Many papers have either eliminated or curtailed their web video efforts. Some chose to focus on doing less video but doing it better, and some have simply dropped any semblance of quality, opting instead for short snippets of video shot by reporters with smartphones or Flip-type cameras. The jury is still out on where this will fit into the long-term journalism paradigm."

Laforet has some wise advice for photographers interested in learning video: "It's a very different field -- and not for everyone. I recommend they try it out first before making the commitment. I recommend they study the competition and the economics of the field they are going into. Just as there are many different sub-fields and specialties and budgets in photography -- the same is true of video. It's a bold move, but one that many should at the very least try, in my opinion."

"Reverie" -- Vincent Laforet was the director and cinematographer on this video considered to be the first 1080p widely released shot on the Canon 5D MKII. It was viewed more than 2 million times in the first week of its release.

Does learning video provide any kind of job safety?

I tried to track down an official study of how many photojournalists had lost their jobs in the last few years in the U.S. NPPA didn't know exact figures, and Kenny Irby, a senior faculty member at Poynter, said he didn't know of any study offering numeric data. He explained that collecting such data took a great deal of resources and money, something scarce these days. "We know that staff sizes and the number of 'feet on the street' reporters are way down," he added.

In an article on Poynter in 2009, photographer Ami Vitale, whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Newsweek, Time and Smithsonian, was optimistic about her experience with video: "This is the best time to be a photojournalist. We have more tools available than ever before, and we also have an audience bigger than any time in the history of mankind ... I see this as a wonderful time to exploit all these tools for the power of good!"

Yet in an interview earlier this year, Dan Chung, a photo and video journalist and founder of the popular website DSLRNewsShooter, said, "I don't really see a future in photojournalism, if I'm completely honest, as a way to earn a living. But also there are a lot of creative opportunities with moving images that you couldn't possibly dream of doing with stills. I'm surprised, though, that relatively few other photographers have made that conversion."

A video of a military parade in North Korea shot by Dan Chung for The Guardian.

But with the cell phones in everyone's pocket being equipped with HD video capability, will free crowdsourced material just take over video journalism as well? Laforet gave a nuanced answer: "I'm afraid so. But not to the same degree. The production hurdles and the amount of work involved in getting a good video piece out (pre-production, script, storyboarding, editing, music, mixing, grading, etc.) makes it more complex than making a single photograph. It's very hard for most to do all of these specialties alone -- it almost demands working with others and therefore becomes more complex and, more often than not, more expensive."

It looks like the term "visual journalist" will become a common phrase. "The move to online has been, arguably, a boon to visual journalism as far as the potential audience is concerned, but obviously the challenges that the web has posed to the business model of newspapers has led to a lot of lost jobs," Elliot said.

As for the problem of many photographers losing their jobs to "citizen journalists" as in the CNN case, Elliot said, "The reality that citizen journalists will have a better chance of 'being there' for the big moment is only more real today. The democratization of photography, where one no longer needs to have esoteric darkroom skills and tens of thousands of dollars of equipment to produce images of relative high quality has certainly affected certain markets.

"But the need for visual journalists who have a command of both the technical aspects of still and video as well as the mind-set for quality visual storytelling remains. Video storytelling is different in execution than still photography, without a doubt. But it has been well-established that very talented still photographers can make the transition back and forth between the media and enhance their visual reporting."

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few years. Certainly the public's demand for visual content shows no sign of declining. Just this month, the Associated Press announced its own online video delivery platform. Clearly, demand is high, and rising.

Amanda Lin Costa is a writer and producer in the film and television industry. She writes a series called "Truth in Documentary Filmmaking" and is currently producing the documentary, "The Art of Memories."

December082011

The Peterson brothers rise from homelessness to professional boxers thanks to their head trainer Barry Hunter (center). Photo by Garrett Hubbard/USA TODAY

Tears, sweat, and love. But it was mostly love that propelled Lamont Peterson to the upcoming World Championship title fight this Saturday at the Convention Center in D.C. I met the Peterson brothers Monday night and took this portrait as well as made a quick video story. Watch to my story video here or read more about their story here.

October052011

Photographers who might have aspired to see their work published on the glossy pages of a magazine can now opt for the glossy screen of an iPad.

Once Magazine, a "visual storytelling" app for the iPad, is a new showcase for photographers' work and related multimedia. The app provides three cohesive photo essays, each with an array of high-resolution photos that are united by narrative text and supplemented by other features, such as infographics and audio clips.

Once's free pilot issue was released in August. Its next issue -- which will cost $2.99 and offer subscription options -- will likely be released in October with the debut of Apple's iOS 5 and its new Newsstand feature. Once is yet another magazine app that challenges our understanding of what magazines are -- and might be. Its founders think it might also represent an important path into the future of photography.

Once's Editorial Concept

Once's strategy is to assemble "stories worth touching," said publisher Andrew Jones, in order to make the most of the iPad's interface and its ability to display high-quality images.

The app's focus on quality visuals means that its editorial process begins with the photography. The editorial team identifies photographers with intriguing work and asks them to participate. After about 20 photos on one theme are selected, the Once editorial team identifies a journalist with relevant knowledge and experience, and commissions text that wraps a compelling story around the photo sequence. Additional interactive elements and audio clips are added to the photos to enrich the reading experience.

The three photo essays included in Once's pilot edition cover a lot of territory, and each depict life in different regions: the far reaches of Greenland; Abkhazia, a region of the country of Georgia; and Sun City, Ariz., a retirement community near Phoenix.

While photographers whose work is used in Once may have taken these photos while working on other projects, the text used with them is newly developed.

"It's a unique editorial model in that the stories are built retroactively. It fits well with our budget and our business model," said Nick Hiebert, Once's communications director. "We don't have to pay journalists upfront to go to these countries. We find journalists who are already in these areas or already have expertise in the area, which makes reporting much easier for them and more cost-effective."

Photographer Andrea Gjestvang, whose photographs of life in Greenland are included in the pilot issue, appreciated the opportunity for a different selection of her images to tell a new story in Once.

"I like the idea that they brought in the journalist who wrote the independent text. [It was] her words, her story, but it went very well with my pictures," said Gjestvang, a freelance photographer who is based in Norway. "Normally, when I have been presenting this project, I've been focusing more on the daily life and social life, whereas they focused more on the hunting side. The selection of pictures was a bit different than what I normally use, but it was nice that one big project can have different stories within the project."

The Audience for Photography

Once's high-end visual concept is based on its founders' observation that the public is increasingly interested in and sensitive about photography, but so far it's been difficult to make photography lucrative.

"Once is addressing a number of problems, we like to think, one of them being that photography is not paying very well," Jones said. Yet DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras and cell phone photography have helped more people take higher-quality photos and in greater quantities, he observed.

"It seems like a real disconnect. More people know more and are exposed to really high-quality photography. Once is trying to leverage that whole shift in consumer habits, toward thinking about photographs being really valuable," Jones said.

Starting with the next issue, photographers published in Once will receive a cut of the magazine's revenues. The $2.99 charge for each issue first will be reduced by Apple's standard 30 percent cut, then the remainder is split: half to the magazine and half divided among the three published photographers. So far, the magazine's writers have received a flat fee, but Once is exploring ways to include them in the revenue-sharing model as well.

Hiebert noted that this isn't usually how photographers are paid for their work. "Typically, photographers are contracted with a set amount of money. Because we have this new data that Apple gives us through iTunes, we're allowed to see how many downloads are coming -- and how much money the magazine is making -- much more accurately than publications in the past that were relying on traditional sales data," he said.

Photographer Gjestvang is hopeful that this model will appeal to a wider audience.

"Many photographers hope that it will bring a new way of publishing work in the future which will also pay for what you are doing," she said. "Of course, you need the audience to pay for the project that you spend so much time on ... It's also important that if you want to have a broad audience, to not only make a magazine for other photographers, but for all kinds of people, to make the audience curious about what's going on in the world."

Once Looks Ahead

The Once concept is likely to evolve to include additional multimedia -- though photography will always play a major role -- and to be available on new platforms.

"We're trying to push a new type of storytelling experience that is only available on the iPad, kind of a tactile experience," Jones said. "That learning experience, that entertainment experience is so much richer when we can bring in the reader through physically touching."

Today's photographers shooting with DSLRs often capture audio and video that can be incorporated into Once. Infographics are also now easier to create with new online tools. The complexity of the app as a whole, though, is still somewhat limited by technical considerations.

"We would love to include as much video and audio in every essay [as we could], but the truth of the matter is that it increases file size and that maybe affects download numbers," Hiebert said. "We also don't want to ... distract from the narrative focus."

The magazine plans to move next to the iPhone, then to explore opportunities on Android platforms, including the new Kindle Fire tablet, which require more development than the shift to the iPhone. The potential for the forthcoming iPad 3 to include a higher-resolution "retina display," similar to that already used for the iPhone 4, would also be an ideal match for Once's content, Jones said.

The new platforms will likely lead to still more innovations.

"The iPad has allowed us to develop a pretty unique product in Once. You don't envision a magazine as a three-essay package," Hiebert said. "But we can reconceptualize what the magazine is, now that there are different platforms for delivering them."

Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Linfield College. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.

April282011

Louis Mariette, a bespoke hat couture (read: fancy!) designer in his London studio with a hat inspired by the Lilac-Breasted Roller, the National bird of Botswana--where Mariette grew up. Garrett Hubbard / USA TODAY

March292011

I've had a blast covering some of March Madness and spending a few days with Mike Nuzzo, the man behind the mask of Roc, the Pittsburgh Panther's team mascot. The photo below got some nice play on the cover of the Sports section when the Erik Brady's masterfully written story ran on March 22. Sorry for the delay!

Catheryn makes some adjustments to Roc's costume during game two of the NCAA playoffs at the Verizon Center March 19, 2011. Butler beat Pittsburgh in the last moments of the game after a series of controversial calls by the referees. Garrett Hubbard/USA TODAY

I had so much fun telling this story and getting to know Mike, his mother who is the cheer coach, and some of the cheer team. Really a great group of people so dedicated to cheer, their team, and their school. Mike is a great guy, huge Pitt sports fan, dedicated, and a smart dude too. He's in the nursing program at Pitt. This guy is going places.

Did I mention that I was court-side for both games? As in kneeling on the floor. Ouch! That wood is hard on the knees for what it's worth. I need to do take a cue from my colleague at Jack Gruber at USA TODAY and bring a padded chair and earplugs. I'd be happy to share more about the how's of this story if anyone is interested. Check out my video story "Man behind the mascot" which I edited on last Monday.

The most maddening thing about this NCAA tourney has been the continuous Butler upsets and, well, of course my attempt to park anywhere near the Verizon center during the first round. I had to tip a guy $15 just to get in a garage three blocks away! But back to Butler. Who would have thought they would be in the final four?

Matt Howard, (54) after he scores the winning basket against Old Dominion with one-tenth of a second left on the clock in round one of the NCAA playoffs at the Verizon Center March 17, 2011.Garrett Hubbard/USA TODAY

Old Dominion in round one against Butler. Garrett Hubbard/USA TODAY

The team bands make the games so much more fun! A Uconn band member waiting for their team to play in round 2 of the NCAA playoffs. Garrett Hubbard/USA TODAY

March252011

Sitting in a lawn chair outside the Spokane Apple Store last week, I pondered the absurdity of my week-long quest to buy an iPad 2. Arriving at 5 a.m. netted me the sixth spot in line and an eventual 16-gig wifi slate of glass and aluminum.

Did I really need another digital device to supplement all the other Apple products that grace my home and workspace? No, of course not. But using the iPad 2 this past week has made me giddy with excitement as I discover one new feature or application after another. It’s interesting, when I demonstrate to people who have never seen or touched one, how utterly amazed they are. Suffice to say this multimedia device is smokin’ hot. There are enough glowing reviews on the Web that I don’t need to pontificate much more.

A great tool for photojournalists

The one thing I really wanted to do with my iPad 2 was edit and send photos from the field back to the newspaper. I couldn’t find much info from other photojournalists about what applications would help me replace Photo Mechanic and Photoshop on my laptop. Nor could I find anyone who was using the iPad to send their photos via FTP (File Tranfer Protocol) back to their newspapers. I can happily announce that during my first photo assignment today I did just that.

My first stop last week was to the Apple iPad App Store where I found this amazing little program called Photogene. It allows me to crop, tone, caption and send my photos all from a three dollar application. The best part is that it has a built in FTP, so I can send my photos directly into our Merlin archive system.

Here was my workflow today:

Shot a photo of a woman in a job-training program working in the kitchen of a restaurant.

Ordered lunch, sat down at a table and plugged in the Apple camera connection cable between the iPad and the USB port on my Nikon D3s. It immediately displayed all the. jpg’s in the iPad’s photo browser. By touching a photo, it marks it so you don’t have to bring in every image on your card. I hit “Import Selected” and the files were quickly downloaded from the camera.

I open Photogene and select the photo I want to edit. The workflow now is super simple. I crop my photo, and then toned the image. Toning is done using sliders for exposure, color temperature, saturation etc. There are a ton of other adjustments from noise reduction to selective color channels. It even has a digital noise filter and curves adjustment tool.

On to the metadata tab, I clicked “ITPC” and added caption info and filled out the other metadata fields that are needed to archive the photo for later.

Finally, I hit the export button and chose “FTP” from the menu (You can also send directly to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or email.) I already have all the info such as IP address and password stored, so I just add the file name (make sure there are no spaces) and upload the photo using my ATT MiFi . A minute later it was ready for an editor to move to the desk.

Some observations

Will the iPad 2 replace a laptop? Probably not. I think the iPad is perfect if you need to move a couple of photos from your car during a breaking news event. It’s not be ideal for slogging 300 photos from a high school basketball game.

You need to buy the Camera Connection Kit from Apple ($30.00), which includes an SD card reader and a Apple connector to mini USB cord. I wish there was a CF card reader, but the cable works as advertised.

Typing a caption is easy, but it is all on one line that gets obscured as you type past the field boundary. A bigger caption field for photojournalists is a must have.

Get the PhotoSync application ($1.99). It lets you transfer photos to and from your iPhone, computer and iPad wirelessly. It also lets you bypass the iTunes software, which is not really intended for photos.

I also bought the pro upgrade for eight dollars. It adds a few more things that professionals need such as applying star ratings, adding personal watermarks to exported images, saving your FTP settings, adjusting RGB curves individually, and controlling JPEG export settings.

If any other photojournalists are using an iPad to edit photos please share your experiences in comments below!

March052011

Have you ever met someone who just wanted to help you? I have. His name is Bob.

Last year I met Bob Carey. I had come to Texas to be a faculty speaker at the Southwestern Photojournalism Conference. From the moment I met him he began to encourage me. It started in the Stockyards in Ft. Worth, Texas during the student workshop for the conference. Unbeknownst to me, he was observing me working with my students for the day. He approached me and told me he loved how I was working with and challenging the students to focus on storytelling. Then he invited me to be a faculty speaker at one of his conferences. Now, at that time, Bob was the President of the National Press Photographers Association. Needless to say I was quite honored and accepted his invitation almost immediately. We soon began to swap stories about photojournalism, changing storytelling technology, and about life. Four-months later I was teaching three classes at NPPA's annual Convergence conference in Charleston, SC. Now, one year later I'm hanging out with Bob again at the SWPJC in Texas. I am grateful to have met Bob.

February272011

In 2005, Joe Weiss released Soundslides, a killer audio slideshow production program that helped transition many newspaper photojournalists into the world of online multimedia. Audio slideshows soon flooded newspaper websites. Its simple interface and even simpler learning curve proved a perfect match for anyone wanting to add an audio narrative to their online picture stories.

But times have changed. Many of those same photojournalists moved on to add video to their storytelling toolboxes. As they began to master video editing programs like Apple’s Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro, it seemed like no brainer to use them to produce audioslide shows. I cannot say building an audio slide show is easier with a video editing program, but it does afford you some added features that are hard, if not impossible, to replicate in Soundslides.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned when making an audio slideshow using Apple’s Final Cut Pro:

Soundslides is great at taking all the tedious production out of the process. It grabs all your photos in a file and automatically sizes them for the web. When producing in a video editor, you have to do all this image prep yourself. But it’s not too bad if you create a Photoshop action to automate the process. I create a one-click action to reduce the image dpi to 72 and size to each photo to a width of 2500 pixels. This size makes the images large enough to use motion on later if needed.

Before you start to edit, it is important to set up your timeline as an HD project. It makes the photos look so much better, even after you compress the hell out of them later for the web. I generally pick Apple Intermediate Codec 720p30 from the “Easy Setup” menu. I think progressive timelines without the interlacing work best for photos. I’ve even used the XDCAM 1080p30 setting with great results.

As I assemble my story, I tend to build as I go. I start editing at the beginning with audio, then layer on my photos. I use the voiceover tool in Final Cut Pro to record my script narrative direct to the timeline. This is just how I do it. There are many ways to edit. You may like to have the whole project storyboarded out before you start your edit. Do whatever works best for you.

I really try to scale up each photo to fill my Canvas viewer. This looks so much better than having black bars showing above and below the image.

One of the nice things about producing audio slideshows in a video editor is the ability to display multiple photos at once in the Canvas viewer. This solves the vertical photo issue of trying fill a horizontal space with a vertical rectangle. I like to fade in my vertical photos on the far left or right of my frame then fade in another image to fill the rest of the frame. Click image below to see and example of using multiple photos in one window.

Mount St. Helens comes to town

In Soundslides the default is to add a cross-fade to every image. I see a trend away from this as more people edit in video programs. Most of the time I just use quick cut between photos. It took me awhile to break the cross fade habit, but now I see how much better a show flows without all that cross fading. It also makes it easier to edit to a beat in the audio.

I tend to edit an audio slide show like I edit a video story. I try to use sequences of images that help move the story through time and place. I try to mix up the photo selection by using a mix of wide, medium and tight shots just like I do with video.

Use motion on photos with caution. Most of the time, slower is better. You don’t want to make the viewer seasick. Try not to zigzag all over the place. Use motion on a photo to reveal or isolate something that pertains to the story. I like to put a very slow pull or push on a photo that is almost not noticeable. It adds just a little kick to a static photo. One last suggestion on using motion with photos; If you are pulling out on a photo and your next image has motion too, make that one zoom in; otherwise it makes the viewer feel like they are heading through a tunnel.

Finally, the other added benefit of producing audio slide shows in a video editor is that it brings all your multimedia under one player for your website. If your video player has embed ability, it makes it easier for viewers to share your story and make it go viral.

October182010

I was asking around recently, among my friends at other j-schools who teach photojournalism. Yes, they are still teaching Soundslides. The No. 1 reason is almost unanimous: It’s a great transition from making stills to making video. I think it also helps — a lot — with teaching storytelling.

Right now I’m in the midst of a four-week module where I teach green young journalism students to tell a story with Soundslides. Fortunately, they’ve just finished four weeks of gathering and editing audio. Unfortunately, most of them have no experience with photojournalism.

Gathering Audio. Part 2: A Practical Guide. Brian Storm and Jim Seida wrote this guide years ago, and I think it’s still the best. I was just re-reading it earlier today, and man, it rocks. It’s 4,000 words, or about 10 pages single-spaced, and I would bet most of my students don’t take the time to read it — even though I assign it every semester. What a pity. It’s like gold.

So I’m blogging it here in case you’ve never read it. Or maybe you read it a long time ago and forgot how great it is.

Which should I work on first, pictures or sound?

That depends. If there’s sound that I think might be gone in a few minutes, I’ll probably break out my MiniDisc and start recording. If the light is perfect but fading, I’ll most likely make pictures first.

There’s no right way to do it, and there’s always a tradeoff. You have to accept the fact that when you are recording, you’ll miss some great images and when you are shooting you’ll miss some wonderful sound. I’ve tried doing both at once, it doesn’t work very well. Getting good sound takes just as much skill, energy and focus as getting good pictures; it’s tough to do both things at the same time.

– Meredith Birkett, Special Projects Multimedia Producer, MSNBC.com

That’s just a taste. Ha, we don’t use MiniDiscs any more (thank God!), but all the advice still fits. There’s lots more, just as good as that bit.

October132010

Late last month, when tornado-like, end-times-are-nigh-style winds sliced through New York City, Time magazine posted to its NewsFeed an image of a twister forming in the waters beyond the Statue of Liberty — menacing, dark, grainy. The story the mag published — “Gotham Tornado: Amazing Photo of Twister Passing Statue of Liberty” — let the image in question pretty much speak for itself, with the only text accompanying the photo being its headline and twelve SEO-friendly tags. Turns out, though, that the graininess of the image was a symptom not of camera-phone authenticity, but of old age: The photo was shot in 1976.

Time’s mistake — the overzealous posting of an image that, given its context, would seem to be authentic — is one that almost any news organization could make. How, after all, do we check the accuracy of news images, particularly in moments of breaking-news urgency? Though we’re seeing a blossoming of fact-checking in text-based journalism, we have yet to see an equivalent movement in image-based news reporting — mostly, of course, because we lack good tools for determining whether images are authentic or manipulated, whether they depict what they claim to or something else entirely. Which is disturbing, given that we look to images — the raw material of the world, supposedly filtered only through a camera’s lens — to give us an unvarnished view of human events.

Enter Hany Farid. A computer science professor at Dartmouth, Farid is a pioneer in the field of digital forensics, figuring out how to analyze images to determine their authenticity. (Think CSI: Photojournalism.) In his day-to-day work, Farid deals with the algorithmic aspects of photo manipulation — how to translate light and shadow, for example, into data sets that will detect whether a particular image could actually exist in the real world.

“The issues of photo manipulation are going well beyond just the technical, mathematical, geek stuff,” Farid notes. “We’re struggling as a society to deal with what happens when this thing that we have learned to trust over so many years” — the photographic image — “becomes incredibly untrustworthy. And that, to me, is extremely interesting.”

The biggest element of mistrust is the increasing prevalence of manipulation, via Photoshop and other tools. While, most often, those programs are used to create basic composites, or ironically derivative images (cf: Rebecca Gayheart’s Noxemas, courtesy of Gawker), more and more, they’re also being used to produce composites designed to mislead the viewer. Take a tabloid photo of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt on a beach, which seems, at first, true to its caption: “CAUGHT TOGETHER!” Study the image closely, though — actually analyze it — and it becomes apparent that the photo is doctored: Its stars are lit from opposite sides. The image is a combination of two separate photos of the couple merged together through the magic of image-layering. (See more about this photo here.)

One problem is that our brains simply don’t seem to be wired for the kind of bit-by-bit observation such analysis requires. On the contrary: When it comes to images, our minds — which tend to interpret images as singular units, rather than composites of atomic ones — can often abet manipulation. “Your brain is remarkable, but it has some pretty serious limitations,” Farid says. And one of those limitations is image assessment. On sabbatical last year in Berkeley, he worked with neuroscientists and vision scientists, studying the limits of the visual system. In general, “people tend to over-trust their eye…and that’s a very dangerous game to be playing.”

Now, photo-tampering is becoming so prevalent, Farid notes, that mistrust of images is slowly becoming our default. “There’s almost a backlash,” he says, “and now there’s this over-skepticism of everything out there. It’s amazing.”

Digital forensics — shifting the analysis of images from an art to a science — is one way for images to earn back our trust. Forensic techniques “can help bring some sanity to this.” And the field “just continues to get more and more sophisticated,” Farid notes. “We’re able to do things today that a few years ago seemed unimaginable. And a few years from now, we’ll do something that, today, seems unimaginable.” Farid and his team have been developing software that can be used — by news organizations, in particular — to analyze the authenticity of images before publishing them. It’ll be a few years before that software is ready to be used, he notes; but “we are just getting to the stage where, I think, commercialization is viable.”

That’s a good thing, because the need for rigorous analysis of images is, and will continue to be, increasingly urgent. “It used to be, if you had a handful of photojournalists around the country, you could have some kind of quality control,” Farid points out. But now — “when everybody’s got a cell phone with video and images and they’re posting on their blogs, and to Twitter and YouTube” — the ethics of photojournalism are being tested and shifted. An analytic platform could bring a sense of universality back to those principles. “The issue with photo manipulation is that it’s not black-and-white,” Farid notes. “There are certain types of photo manipulation which are completely acceptable — and there are other ones that are completely unacceptable.” Images have always held a powerful place in journalism, of course, and “you’ve always been able to editorialize with photographs.” But now, Farid says, “it’s a question of degree.” Now, using images, “you can really change the entire story. And that, obviously, is a very different beast.”

September292010

This camera is one bad boy. Yesterday, I set my ISO at 4000 and left it there for three photo assignments. ISO 4000 looks like 800 did on my vintage Nikon D2h of just a few years ago.

My newspaper has always been a Nikon shop. Though I was tempted by all the low-light Canon camera offerings of yore, management never blinked or gave my informed blathering much acknowledgement to make the switch. Now I’m glad they didn’t listen to me. This camera kicks! In the past, when I needed to spin the ISO dial up to, say, ISO 3200, I would often regret the decision later. Noise in digital files looks horrible.

This camera easily handled 4000, and 6400 ISO. I haven’t needed to go higher on the account that I don’t need 500th of a second for an environmental portrait.

Take a look at this shot I did of my daughter Brenna, right, and her friend Shea.

I shot it on my living room floor with just lamplight at 6400 ISO in RAW. I tweaked the color to get the skin tones right and made just basic Adobe CS5 RAW converter adjustments. If I had shot this with my D2h, it would have noise the size of gravel.

This camera will open many new low-light avenues for me and any other shooter lucky enough to get their hands on one. I had to go through Nikon Professional Services to find one. I’m told they are as elusive as unicorns.

The next thing for me to tackle is the whole DSLR video learning curve. I have shot video for five years. My Sony Z-1U and XDCAM EX-1 have served me well. Lately, I’ve been feeling I’m on the outside looking in as the Canon 5D Mk II has dominated the video gear spotlight.

Mostly, I suspect, for the look of the files coming out of these cameras. Shallow depth-of-field is all the rage, but at what cost? Audio is a DSLR camera’s Achilles heel. The contraptions DP’s and video producers are building to make these cameras work gives me pause.

If I was the subject of a story and someone came at me with a steering wheel contraption laden with mics, lights and other paraphernalia, I’d probably freeze up like a deer in headlights.

So my toe dipping starts with the limited video capabilities of the D3s. It has been much maligned for not shooting in the higher resolution of 1920p that Canon cameras do. This doesn’t really concern me. The test files I’ve shot so far look better than anything that comes out of my XDCAM. The huge full-frame sensor in the D3s makes shooting in the dark a breeze. Its 720p file size is just about right for the web-based video storytelling I do. I have to compress the hell out of the videos I shoot, so the huge files from a 5D Mk II will only slow my edit down. I’m not planning to shoot any Hollywood movies, so I’m cool with the Nikon’s smaller file size for now. Of course, in a few months, my camera will probably be rendered obsolete by the rumored Nikon D4. Such is life of a techno geek.

September132010

If times have been tough for journalists who write, they’ve been no better for photojournalists. Magazines and newspapers have cut staff positions and freelance budgets. And the Internet has given rise to free or inexpensive substitutes, like Flickr and iStockphoto. A new startup launching this winter hopes it has come up with a way to solve some of the field’s financial problems, while giving world-class photojournalists a new level of freedom in telling stories and interacting with their audience.

The site, called Emphas.is, will be a platform that looks to the crowd to fund photographers’ work in dangerous places around the world. Similar to other crowdfunding sites like Spot.us or Kickstarter, photojournalists will post trip pitches with a fundraising goal. If that goal is reached, backers will get access to postings from the photographer about his or her experiences and the photographs and videos that are filed along the way. The photos will be initially available to only to backers, but photographers will be free to distribute them as they please — Emphas.is will not own the photographs.

“We’ve been badly hit and we need a solution,” says the site’s founder Karim Ben Khelifa about his work as a photojournalist. In the last 12 years, Khelifa has photographed stories in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somaliland, Kashmir, Kosovo, and other war-torn and dangerous places. His cofounder, Tina Ahrens, is also an established photojournalist. Khelifa’s reached out to elite photojournalists around the world to join him in launching the project. He says plenty of his colleagues are eager to give the idea a try. “We have the top of the top,” he says.

The platform is not a distribution tool meant to reach media outlets, but an experiment in storytelling that will let the photographer take on a more central role.

“The project comes out of frustration,” Khelifa told me. “Having a double-page [photo display] in Time or Vanity Fair…it doesn’t give me a point of view. You might have seen my photographs in Time magazine, but you don’t know me. And I don’t know you.”

And maybe that doesn’t make sense. Photojournalists, particularly war photographers, have a certain allure, one Khelida hopes is the basis for a business model. “We have a romanticism around our profession,” he says. “We realized that our work isn’t the end product, but how we got to it. This is what we expect to monetize.”

Khelifa says he’s often asked how he manages to move around a war zone, or join up with groups like the Taliban and photograph them from the inside. That backstory will be the draw, he says. Backers on Emphas.is will get to meet the photojournalist and then ride along virtually as they sneak through border check points and embed themselves with rebel groups. (Imagine getting a text message from the photog you’ve funded: I’m entering a dangerous region of Yemen, will check back in three days.) The experience will drive how the audience consumes the story.

Khelifa also says that it’s a good opportunity for photographers passionate about injustice in far-flung places. A crowd of funders can support a trip in a way only a few magazine photo editors could before.

But that doesn’t mean media isn’t interested the project. Khelifa is rounding up endorsements from top photo editors and directors at outlets like Time and agencies like the VII and Magnum. For them, the platform offers the potential for both more and lower-cost high-quality photography.

Once the site is launched, photographers will bank on the public pledging small amounts to back their ideas. Khelifa says one of their strategies for reaching those potential donors is through NGOs with large email lists. (NGOs themselves will only be allowed to fund 50 percent of any single project.)

For now, Khelifa has raised his own startup funding from a number angel investors. The next few months will be about getting the details in order, including finishing the platform and bringing on photographers. He hopes to see the site go live in January 2011.

September112010

Newspaper websites historically have never been photo friendly. In the first five years of the active Internet, most photos were compressed to a postage-stamped size of around 15k -30k. They had to in those promising days of 28K modems, where one oversized graphic element would bring a homepage to a screeching halt.

I think many photojournalists gave the early Web a big thumbs down as a place to display their work. At my newspaper, us photojournalists’ collectively shrugged our shoulders when the “web guy” would say that he posted one of our photos online. Later requests on my part, to up the size on our online pictures, was met by one photo manager’s insistence that the images would be downloaded (stolen) or mass-produced across the internet. At that moment I gave up trying and, instead, embraced video as my online medium of choice.

Then, several years ago, Boston.com’s The Big Picture blog rocked my world when it launched. Here, finally, was a large format online gallery that showcased photojournalism the way it should be. The images were displayed in a format that also didn’t frustrate the viewer with slow page loads. The minute I saw it, I knew we had to have something like it for Spokesman.com. Unfortunately our web team was in middle of developing a ground-up overhaul of our CMS, and it never made the priority list.

I was nothin’ but smiles the rest of the day. He gave me the keys, so to speak, to a beautiful Corvette. Behind the scenes, the gallery is really nothing more than a tool that I can access through our web-based Django admin page. I just upload my photos, paste in the captions, add some intro text and a headline, hit save and, drum roll please, instant big picture gallery. The nice thing is, because it is a web-based tool, I can create a gallery from anywhere in the field.

What I like best about our gallery is its clean design. For a long time I pushed the idea of a black background for photos, but our gallery is white and I am fine with that. In fact, I think it is easier on the eyes. I also like how I can pop in drop quotes in between the photos. I am pushing to have commenting on the gallery, which I hope will be enabled soon.

September022010

I watched the equity markets rally today, had a Thai salad in the cafeteria and I thought I had a normal day at the office on my hands. Then I started seeing parts of my city on Live TV throughout the TV banks in the newsroom at USA TODAY. Hostages in my hometown. Scary stuff. Normalcy gone. I emailed our director of video and director of photography to see if they wanted me to go. nothing. so I packed up a few of my items. waited a few more minutes, then went over to the news photo desk and Kate was all about it. I told her I didn't have any glass (photographers speak for lenses) over 400mm. She said she'd get me into the pool locker and get me some gear. I must admit it's pretty fun walking in and saying "I'd like one of these, and these, oh, yes, and one of those. Especially when the these and those includes a 600mm lens with a $7500 price tag.

July302010

The Atlantic Wire site has published a series of different points of view about this week’s Time Magazine cover, which shows a harrowing image of an 18-year-old Afghan woman who has had her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban.

Under the headline “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan”, the magazine’s picture caption reports that the woman was attacked for having tried to flee from “abusive in-laws”.

The Wire asks if the Time is right to publish the cover, with answers first quoted from managing editor Richard Stengel discussing the reasons for their decision.

I thought long and hard about whether to put this image on the cover of Time (…) But bad things do happen to people, and it is part of our job to confront and explain them. In the end, I felt that the image is a window into the reality of what is happening — and what can happen — in a war that affects and involves all of us. I would rather confront readers with the Taliban’s treatment of women than ignore it. I would rather people know that reality as they make up their minds about what the U.S. and its allies should do in Afghanistan.

The article then moves to comments from a range of other publications, some who say the cover is “good journalism” while others feel is “oversimplifies war”.